Over the weekend my Outlook categories have disappeared from the Categories list. How do I get them back?

Anonymous
2024-06-17T15:12:36+00:00

We use categories to group emails coming into a Support mailbox. We set up lots of different categories for different people, teams etc. Each has a different colour assigned to it. When emails come in we will assign the appropriate category. Over the weekend, the categories appear to have been wiped from our categories list i.e. we now have only some predefined ones like Blue Category, Green Category etc. For emails previously categorised, I can still see what category I applied but the coloured 'sticker' is missing and I can no longer select those categories. In addition, if I set up a new category now, whilst I can apply a new category, it's not subsequently available for me to select in the category list, plus the coloured 'sticker' does not appear. Any thoughts on how we might resolve please? I'm using Outlook via Office 365.

Outlook | Windows | New Outlook for Windows | For home

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

0 comments

51 answers

Sort by: Newest
Most helpful Newest Oldest
  1. Anonymous
    2024-10-24T09:57:18+00:00

    I'm still in communication on a near weekly basis to try and get to the bottom of this, but we're nowhere closer to a solution.

    The frustrating thing is that Microsoft are of the opinion that they've fixed this.

    About 4-5 weeks ago, I received an email from the support team, saying that they'd found and fixed the problem, and they were half right....literally....in that about half of my categories had reappeared.

    The other half, over 160 of them, are still AWOL.

    I had a call from the tech team at Microsoft this week, and they're broadly suggesting that maybe my account is corrupted.

    They're saying that the data (categories) are still there, but it's not synchronising with my account properly.

    My real concern here is that, as far as Microsoft are concerned, this problem has been fixed, and if some of us are still missing our categories, it's probably more to do with individual account corruption.

    Personally, I'm not looking forward to a massive account transfer project...think onedrive, onenote, email, calendar, contacts, categories, etc, etc 😒

    Now might be a good time to do some local data backups

    Was this answer helpful?

    1 person found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  2. Anonymous
    2024-10-23T15:51:06+00:00

    This is what happened to me. My categories were still there in the old Outlook, BUT .... the old Outlook stopped right after the categories disappeared and no new messages were categorized. I do have the categories written down now, but Microsoft told me there was no way to reinstate categories or create new ones. Their only suggestion was to try favorites. Too exhausted and exasperated to do that now.

    Was this answer helpful?

    2 people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  3. Anonymous
    2024-10-17T18:13:34+00:00

    This happened to me two days ago. All my categories except for 3 reverted to default. I didn't do anyting in the catagories section. Pretty crazy looking at a white-washed calendar with a couple of sprinkles of color.

    I am running Outlook for Mac, Version 16.89.3 (24092813). The Calendar is in legacy mode (it's the only way I can get some of the company's subscribed calendars to show up right.)

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  4. Anonymous
    2024-10-02T03:43:37+00:00

    I.m having same issue.

    MS techs have been unhelpful so far.

    Will keep you updated

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  5. Anonymous
    2024-10-01T10:01:19+00:00

    Hi...has anyone on here had this problem fully resolved yet?

    When this bug surfaced for us in July, we immediately contacted Microsoft support.

    Last month (early September), around half of our categories re-appeared, and Microsoft closed our case.

    However, the other half are still missing.

    We re-opened a new support ticket, and were informed last night (31 September) that they had issued a software update, and the issue should be resolved.

    Unfortunately, that's not the case. We're still missing most of our categories, in both the app and web version of Outlook.

    Has anyone had a full resolution?

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments